Punishment
by flowerchild3286
Summary: Everything she did was plotted to bring him the maximum amount pain. The bruises she left on his body were a part of it, but only a small part. His body never broke as much as his mind did. DARK FIC.


WARNING: THIS FIC IS VERY DARK.

As you may have noticed by the ridiculously slow updates on MKB, I've had a very hard time getting inspired to write lately. I've finally found a little bit of inspiration in reading some Firefly fics, and this is one of the results. I've wanted to do a fic like this for a long time and never could get it on paper. And just in case you missed that giant warning up top, here it is again: THIS FIC IS VERY DARK.

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She punished him.

Everything she did was plotted to bring him the maximum amount pain. The bite marks, the scratches, the bruises she left on his body were a part of it, but only a small part. His body never broke as much as his mind did. The worst part was that it was his own damned fault. If he'd had better control of himself none of this would have ever started, much less continued.

He was so careful, so damned careful, to never let his attraction show. It was a betrayal of everything to feel the way he did, so he hid it. Pretended that it wasn't there. He only let himself admit it at night, alone in his bed when he let his imagination run rampant. The fantasies that he got off on were nothing like the sex they actually had. In the fantasies she loved him.

If he hadn't stood quite so close that night, she might have loved him like that one day. Or at least she wouldn't hate him.

They had been working late together, which in retrospect was _always_ a bad idea with them. He was standing close behind her, adjusting every aspect of her body in small degrees—more extension here, a greater angle there, her fingers held the slightest bit different—when he heard her sharp gasp. By the time he realized why it was too late. He had stepped too close, and the ever present arousal he felt when he was alone with her was obvious by the way he was pressed against her back. He dropped her arms and took a huge step back.

When she turned toward him he hoped to see equal arousal in her eyes, expected betrayal instead, but was completely shocked by the anger he saw there. Her quiet question was more effective than any yell would have been. "How long?"

"How long what?" he asked, trying to sound innocent. He hoped she would take his cue and forget it ever happened.

She didn't. Her anger deepened. "Don't play games with me, Sasha. How long have you wanted me?"

"Payson—" He was going to tell her to drop it, or that it was all in her head, or anything else he could think of to get out of the situation, but she did something so unexpected that he couldn't say any of it. She walked to him, stood so close to him that their chests were touching, and rested her hand below the buckle of his belt. She pressed her palm against the evidence of his desire and said, "Are you really going to deny this, Sasha? Or try to make an excuse? You're thirty two, not thirteen. You're way past getting accidental erections. So how long have you wanted me?"

Against all sense, he answered. "The whole time. Since the day we met." He'd had a wet dream about her after that first day at the Rock, something he'd almost never experienced in adulthood. He went out and found a woman to hook up with the next night and wore himself out with her, but Payson still made an appearance in his dreams afterward, and had nearly every night since.

He stopped breathing when her hand pressed harder against him. For a brief second he thought she was making advances. A _very_ brief second, because the pressing became squeezing and the squeezing was incredibly painful. Payson ground out, "You _bastard_. You let me believe all that time that it was in my head. I was humiliated and you were, what, jacking off to thoughts about me? It must have added a lot of heat to your fantasies once you knew I was attracted to you, huh?"

"That's not—" The denial died on his lips. It was true, exactly as she said it. He wanked thinking about her every night, and the fantasies were multiplied by thousands after she kissed him. Knowing what her lips tasted like almost killed him. She squeezed harder and he cried out in pain. "Fine, it's true, I admit it! Now will you please let go?" he pleaded.

She did and he sighed in relief. He tried to apologize. "I'm sorr—"

She cut him off again, this time with a slap so hard that the inside of his cheek cut on his teeth and his mouth filled with blood. He swallowed it and tried to speak again, but she was already gone.

Maybe he could have salvaged something of their relationship if he'd left the gym then, but he brooded in his office instead, so he was still there when Payson came out of the locker room. He thought when she walked into the office that she regretted her actions and wanted to talk it through, but he couldn't have been more wrong.

He was too shocked to stop her when she settled one knee on either side of his legs and lowered herself to his lap, or to protest when she pulled his shirt over his head. The moment her lips touched his collar bone he knew he was lost.

He didn't hesitate to latch on when she pulled her tank top down to reveal her bare breasts. With that touch, his punishment began. She dug her nails into his shoulders until she drew blood and then dragged them down across his back. He was so distracted by the pain that he didn't know when she reached between them to free him from his pants. All he knew was that suddenly she was sinking down on him and nothing else mattered.

It stung when he realized she wasn't a virgin. So many of his fantasies revolved around being her first. If the rest of her behavior that night hadn't proved that she was a different woman than she used to be, this did. She had only dated that idiot Max for two months, but apparently she had sex with him. That wasn't the Payson he knew. _This_ wasn't the Payson he knew, but he couldn't bring himself to stop.

She was brutal. Her nails and teeth left deep cuts on his body, she pulled on his hair so hard and some came out, and twice she slapped him. When they both finished, she climbed off him, smoothed out her skirt, and left without a word.

She came to him again a few days later and he was too weak to say no. She was just as violent as she had been the first time, taking her pleasure at the expense of his pain, and left as soon as she orgasmed. He was left hard and wanting, and that was the first time he felt a little bit of hate toward her.

Twice more she cornered him, used him, punished him, and left before he finished. Then something inside of him snapped and he started fighting back. The next time he sought her out and took control. He came inside of her and left _her_ wanting, just like she had been doing to him. That was the way it stayed between them after that. Whoever was in control took their pleasure and left the other angry and unsatisfied.

Nothing changed between them in the gym. They worked together just as efficiently as they always had, but there was no warmth left in the relationship. Kim was the only person who noticed, and none of her probing was sufficient to get either of them to open up. He and Payson both made sure to cover the marks on their bodies and mask the hate in their eyes.

She broke him with her hate, but it didn't occur to him until months later to wonder what it was that broke her. The madness was already there before she mounted him that first night, but by the time he realized that, it was too late for him to care. He took his anger out on her the same way that she took hers out on him: brutality. Pain and frustration and humiliation. They were never face to face when he was in control. She had too much power when she looked at him, so he pushed her into the most degrading positions he knew and punished her for having that power. If they were ever caught it would look like he was forcing himself on her, but when he allowed her to speak she chanted for him to give her more, harder, cause more pain. She got off on it. They both did.

He never used a condom when they were together. A small part of him wanted her to get pregnant, to force some kind of confrontation between the two of them besides their violent, hate-filled sex. She knew, though, and she used it against him. One night after he came inside of her and pushed her down on the floor, she looked up at him and said, "Don't get your hopes up about knocking me up. I'm not stupid enough to do this without birth control." He made sure that she paid for that the next time he was in control.

Even after months of punishment, he was still surprised by the amount of violence concealed in her tiny frame. More than once he was forced to the ER with his injuries—a broken wrist, a badly bruised rib, multiple infected cuts that she kept reopening on purpose. The pain was only a part of it. She did it because she knew how humiliating it was for him to go to the hospital with injuries that screamed domestic abuse. Every time it happened he swore that he was going to end their toxic relationship, but he never did. He would never be able to stop until she ended things. She would one day. She'd get tired of using him and toss him aside.

That day terrified him, because he knew it would drive away what little was left of his sanity. He wasn't sure if he'd live through it. Worse, he wasn't sure if she'd live through it.

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A/N: This almost ended on a much darker note. Feel free to speculate.

I'm working on the next chapter of MKB, and then after that will be a fluffy little meme fic also inspired by my Firefly reading. No more hate sex.


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